Hey what's in there? I dunno, lets go see...

So the day before i went caving (extremely lame caving) and tubing (which was a lot more fun). But wait, what happens when you combine the two? Tubing in a cave? or is it caving in a tube? Either way it was scary/cool as hell!

The entrance to our cave

In we go...

Imagine, floating in a tube through a cave with a little light attached to your head, the ceiling 1-1.5 m above your head, pulling yourself along with a rope. I have to admit i was quite nervous. Wait, scratch that, i was freaking scared. I didn't want to drown in there. what if the water suddenly started to rise? We'd be so screwed.

I'm so glad we decided to hire a guide for the day. The basic quote of the day was, "Hey what's in there? I dunno, lets go see..." At first i was the very anti explorer. I've heard stories how you can get lost in caves. And this one has water, which did not make me feel any better. But after squeezing ourselves and our tubes through what was about a 1 m crawl space, I was hooked. We entered into another room which was large enough to stand in. I'm sorry about the pictures, but the lighting in the cave was just terrible.

Hey what's in there?

I dunno, lets go see...

We looked around the room for a bit. There wasn't really anyhting there. Until we stopped talking and heard the faint sound of water flowing by. We followed the sound and through another opening found a new section of the river (this river flows under the mountain for about 2 km). I was like, what the hell, lets jump in. So back onto our tubes, in a new place, floating God knows where.

Down river we beached ourselves again thinking we've found the end. But Hey what's in there? I dunno, lets go see...came up again. Through another small crawl space (more like a squat space) we went, again we found another section of the river. By this point, with so much exploring, a bottle of Beerlao in me, and my super waterproof camera, my thirst for adventure grew even more. We decided to turn our lights off and feel our way around in the darkness for a few min (sorry, no pics, duh). That was a very strange feeling. Walking around in complete darkness, with water dripping on you from wherever, a low ceiling and muddy ground underneath. It really enhances your sense very quickly.

This entire adventure was of course enhanced by our guide who always told us, hey, lets go in there! We always then asked, whats in there? His answer? I dunno... But i think in the end that he really did know what he was doing and was just joking around with us. But for the whole time inside the cave, it really felt like we were exploring it for the first time.

On our way back out

Tubes, are good, caves are good. Together, is a whole new experience!

The two travelers

Our ride home got stuck. We had to help push it out while some farm instrument helped provide us with so added assistance. (We COULD have did it without the farmer but we were climbing the day before so we were kinda weak)

-bk